Much of this data was prepared from the Gagnef parish church records.  It begins with myself and reaches back to ca 1543.
The patronymics may be a little confusing to follow, but it becomes easier if you just look for each person to have a little bit of his/her fathers name.  Wherever possible I have inserted the previous surname in brackets.  Anders (Ersson) Andersson daughter would become Anna (Andersson) Andersdotter.

A little bit of history: 

Where did the Swedes come from?
 
There are numerous geographical studies, archaeological findings, historical accounts and written evidences which confirm much of Scandinavian history.  Most of the written history begins after 600 AD.  There is some evidence that Swedish predecessors were migratory Thracians, an aggressive refugee "boat-people" who first came from the ancient city of Troy.                                  

Swedish emigration to America is rather typical for European emigration westward to America during the 19th century. Therefore, we have elected to present the background of the Swedish emigration at that time.

Painting "The Emigrants" by Swedish artist Knut Ekwall, (1843-1912). This painting depicts the artist's vision of what the Atlantic crossings could be like for the immigrants. Courtesy by Lena Björk Kaplan, President of the American Scandinavian Foundation in New York, owner of this beautiful work.

 
The tidal wave of Swedish emigration began in the mid 1840s, when the first organized emigrant groups started to arrive in New York. These farmers destined to Iowa and Illinois were followed during the period up to 1930 by almost 1.3 million countrymen. The Swedes still rank number seven among the European immigrant groups.
Many of them, like "the father of Swedish emigration", Gustav Unonius, saw no future in Sweden and left for America. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Sweden was a land of poverty, want and social frustration. Swedish emigration primarily had the same causes as the contemporary population surge from Northern and Western Europe: population pressure, economic and - above all - agricultural hardships, a profound social crisis, widespread political and religious discontent.

 

The countryside of Dalarna, Sweden.
It’s the ”Dalahästen” we’re talking about , a wooden horse painted in bright, cheerful colours. To many people it represents the original, genuine symbol of Sweden, more powerful than the Swedish flag. It made its international breakthrough at the World Exhibition in New York in 1939.

The ”Dalahästen” was carved out of a piece of wood in the evening firelight after the day’s work in the forest while the snow fell outside the window and the wind howled round the corner. That it should be a horse was obvious – the horse was at the same time friend, work-mate and a symbol of strength.

Originally, it was a toy, something made and sold to eke out the housekeeping money. Today, it is an ornament, a tourist souvenir and still a genuine piece of Swedish handicraft. Nowadays, hundreds of thousands of wooden horses are produced every year. They are manufactured and sold at Nusnäs, a village just south of Mora. Visitors from all over the world come to see how the horse is carved and decorated and, then, to buy one as a souvenir.

• The biggest ”Dalahäst” in the world stands at the approach to Avesta. It was unveiled in 1989, is 13 metres high and weighs 6.7 tonnes.

• The smallest produced so far measures 3.5 millimetres. Its decorations were painted by Gunilla Lindberg at Nusnäs.

• About 400,000 "Dalahästar" are produced every year. Twenty per cent go for export.

 

               

   This data base is GED2HTML with family charts. 

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